


old maid

by hoopdedoop



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16581239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoopdedoop/pseuds/hoopdedoop
Summary: A roaring heart under the earth's crust; a beast perhaps untamable even by the most experienced of animal keepers.





	old maid

 

 

Pressing heat, not from any hearth or any fireplace in sight; No, instead it rose from below the floor. Stone floors are commonly cold, but that expectation would deceive you. Perhaps comfortable at first, it soon became unpleasant. On the floor, their postures had quickly deteriorated. It was hard to be comfortable, sitting with your legs crossed or propped up on your elbows. When laying flat on your stomach, the heat did just that much more of a difference.

 _Tick-tock, tick-tock,_ sounded the dial, and the pendulum moved from side to side, slow and heavy like the sweat on their brows in the stuffy underground heat.

Stillness as usual, but burdened with tension. Satori tried to concentrate on her reading, but it was hard. The rocking chair creaked as she reached for her glass of wine. It would not clear out the chatter, but it was something.

Thoughts churning and churning, repeated observations, overwhelming emotion. How could one person have so many thoughts in their head at once? She had read many minds in her days, but this one was a bit peculiar.

Her eyes fell back on the page, and when the room was engulfed in a mighty roar, she was not surprised. She had been waiting. A lion stood in the room now, an enraged lion with a big bushy mane, its gaping mouth hanging wide open.

 ** _“Cheater!!”_** It bellowed, and the sounds of betrayal and agony were dripping off of every surface in the large room. With movements as dramatic as its words, closing short distance instantaneously-- and Koishi had the flat side of the halberd’s blade pressed against her throat.

Her hands were still in her lap, holding a fan of cards.

“I’m not cheating.”

She tipped her head. Her mouth open, broadly, but not in a smile. It was less a lack of concern in her words, and more a lack of anything. As usual.

 _“You **were** cheating!”_ Kokoro held her stance. Her rigid, dramatic stance. _“These eyes saw you cheat! **You’re not playing fair!!”**_

She marks her words with a slight, carefully coordinated push with the halberd and Koishi tips her head further, her expression frozen in place. _“How else did you win over and over and over?!”_

Kokoro’s stare is piercing, but has no effect. Koishi exists on a different wavelength.

Satori watches them with a grimace. She cannot interfere. It wouldn’t do much of anything. This was all her own idea, but at the end of the day, she’s at mercy of the home-invader and her own sister both.

“Whoops!” Koishi’s words barely sound celebratory. Slowly she raises her arms into the air. “You got me!”

From her sleeves, it rains cards, like the ones in her hand, like the ones Kokoro had already throw on the floor in anger.

 **“I knew it!!”** The lion roars at the ceiling. _“Aaaaaarghhh!!”_ She vibrates with anger, overflowing– Her emotions move the earth, all the tension released, now terrorizing her surroundings.

Her mind too, has erupted in a flurry of noise.

_Thump–_

Kokoro draws a deep, shaky breath. Satori had closed her book firmly. She sets it aside.

“Koishi,” She says, warning. “Were you cheating?”

She had been watching them. It didn’t make any difference.

“I switched some of the cards.” Koishi whipped her head around. “But I wasn’t cheating.”

 _“How does that even work?!”_ Kokoro held the halberd in both hands now, raised above her head. A lot of her anger diminished, she mellows out into a contradictory mix of indifference and concern, her voice louder than her emotions.

Satori cannot read Koishi’s mind, but she quickly understands.

“It’s so boring to just win all the time and so easily too.” Koishi’s arms raise and freeze into a shrug. “So I switched some cards.”

“B-but, _you!!”_ Kokoro tries to recreate the sound of involuntarily choking on your own words. “You kept winning!! _Every single round!!”_

Arms still in place, Koishi’s eyes roll from side to center. She looks Kokoro straight in the eye. “Exactly.”

Kokoro slumps. As if her life was over, she sinks to her knees, then to a sitting. Her forehead hits the stone floor. The lion is gone. It has been vanquished. Now, there is only a sad, sad old woman at the brink of her mortal life.

Kokoro tries to whisper, but it’s hard to get it right. “Am I that bad at this game?”

Kokoro sobs, and Koishi pats her head where she lays. “Sure!” Koishi says. “You’re terrible.”

Satori gets out of her rocking chair, and it whines, much more genuinely so than Kokoro’s highly theatrical sobbing. She sighs.

As long as Kokoro is face down on the floor, she might have a chance to interfere. “How about,”

_Sl_ _ip, slip, slip, slip–_

Satori drags her feet across the floor. Lined along the walls are bookshelves, but they hold more than books. “-We play something else?”

Still on the floor, Kokoro’s head shoots up instantly. Fox eyes gleam. **“No way in hell am I ever-”** Her body follows, “--Playing any games with a mind-reader!! _No way!!_ I have tolerated more than enough just being-”

“Hey.” Kokoro flinched. Koishi has got her nose. “Don’t be mean to my big sister.”

Koishi twists her pinching grip. With a yelp of pain, Kokoro edges backwards with a calculated move. Fascinated, Koishi allows herself to be dragged along, her grip tightening.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but hell is where I live. If it doesn’t suit you, you can leave, you know?” Satori leers, smiling at her own awful joke. “Besides, I was thinking we should play a game where mind reading won’t make for any difference.”

“…Does a game like that even exist?” Kokoro ask, nasally.

“Oh, why shouldn’t it?” Satori asks. She smiles, as Kokoro is listing the names of every game she knows in her mind, and they’re not very many.

Koishi recognized the box Satori has pulled from the shelf. “Aha!” She exclaims, with a shadow of excitement, freeing Kokoro’s nose. “Dominoes!” Fingering her arms up over her head, she slaps Kokoro in the face.

“Yes, that’s right!” Satori’s smile was different now. Kokoro sat frozen in place as a result.

The sisters had used to play a lot of games together when they were younger. Mostly ones with east Asian origin, and despite acquiring a taste for western decor, food and clothes over time, Satori still preferred the same old-time killers. She had a pretty big collection of them.

You need time-killers in a place like old hell.

Approaching them, Satori rattles the box. Koishi rejoices once more. Kokoro quickly scoots backwards.

The tiles clatter satisfyingly against the stone floor. They are clearly mismatched, varying shades of elegant bone-white; a tell-tale of their origin.

“It has been so long since we played with these.” Koishi states her observation. It had been a long time since they’d played anything, but Satori doesn’t say anything.

Kokoro sits a distance away, cautious. Satori eyes her. “Sitting over there isn’t going to keep me from reading your mind, you know?”

Kokoro covers her nose.

Koishi has collected a number of tiles, looking at them. Their surfaces are smooth and they’re all the same but different, and she likes them very much. “I’m not sure I remember the rules for this game.”

That she says, having collected as many high numbered ones as possible.

Satori can’t block out Kokoro’s jumbled-up line of thought, and responds to her as much she does to Koishi: “There’s a new way to play this game, a way that’s non-competitive. So, you won’t be needing to observe us for tactical advantage, menreiki.”

Kokoro gasps.

“And yes, I really can read minds. Now get over here.”

Satori takes a look at Koishi’s hand. “The numbers don’t matter either. Any tile is the same.”

Kokoro has approached them somewhat, carefully. “Then, what’s even the point?” The line is spoken just as it enters her mind.

“To kill time.” Satori says, sounding bored. “To have fun.” She says, harshly.

Satori has quickly lined up 5 tiles in a row, standing up in attention. She waits. Koishi has already noticed.

It only takes a few seconds. Koishi reaches out to them with a smile. A light brush of the finger, and the first tile topples, hitting the next, and the next, and the next.

The fast escalation of events overwhelms Kokoro. “Whoa!” Hands on her cheeks she springs from her seat in surprise.

“It looks fun, right?” Satori sounds optimistic, even if the look of fatigue never quite seems to vanish from her face.

“Let’s see how many we can set up. How about that?” The question is just a formality. The girls are hardly listening.

Koishi has reached her hand into the box, and the tiles rattle as she grabs a handful. Kokoro stares intently before her as she settles back down in slow-motion.

Together, they start working, distracted, silent. A moment of true stillness, free of tension, and with the edge taken off of Kokoro’s intense inner emotional life. Satori tries to savor it. She can foresee the chaos ahead, falling dominoes, Kokoro’s falling tears, hours of work undone at one unconscious misstep.

Koishi will say “Whoops,” once more, the lion’s roar will echo in old hell once more, and unless the spectacle is distracting enough in itself the dissatisfaction will abound.

Until then, Satori has peace of mind.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on my blog when I first wrote it over 2 years ago, intended to put it here eventually but never did. I edited it a little. Doesn't change the fact that it's very short, and very it's old, but it's something.
> 
> Oh and. There's actually a mistake in this fic. The lion doesn't represent anger, actually. I mistook that when I first wrote this but I don't really feel like changing it since the prose relies on it too much. If I hadn't mentioned it... would anyone have ever noticed? Hmm.


End file.
